For anon -- I think I wrote this after the first episode of Before the Storm came out? It’s unfinished, largely unrevised, and doesn’t quite fit on my Ao3 library, but here’s a tiny harriscott drabble, featuring: stupidly taking up close pictures of forest fires, unapologetically dra,rry-inspired banter, a hipster wearing a wool sweater during a west coast spring and a fifteen (I think?) year old who owns a car.
He smells the fire before he feels it in the air, hears the crackle of branches giving way to embers, charcoal crumbling to soot. Evan rolls his eyes first, because of course some idiot would light up the forest when he’s trying to take landscape shots, and goes for his phone to dial 911.
Nowadays, satellites and watchtowers can detect wildfires long before the average civilian can detect it, but you can never be too certain. The operator, after asking him all these meaningless questions about whether he’s in danger (if that was the case he would’ve mentioned it first, wouldn’t he?), assures him that firetrucks are on the way. Evan frowns as he flips his phone shut and squints up at the sky, watching specks of black flutter upward, smoke rolling into the hot air.
At a distance, he should be fine.
But Evan Harris is never one to miss a photo opportunity.
He chains his bike to the nearest fence post and takes off running, then a brisk walk when he almost trips down a hill on a branch. No one’s around but he forces a laugh at himself anyway.
Before he even slows to a stop at the hiking path, he’s got his camera out, snapping blindly before he bites down the shivers that bleed their way in as the adrenaline dies down and starts looking at the scene. Flames are licking at the peaks of the trees nearest him. Understandable, and not necessarily an indication that the trunks themselves are at risk of collapsing; dried leaves and branches can catch fire by sunrays alone. He takes a picture of that, then fiddles with his position to try to get everything in the shot at once.
Gravel crunches under his shoes. He’s sweating from more concentration than the heat, which is no worse than standing by an open oven. At some point he tugs off his sweater and weighs his hat down underneath it. When he turns back, his eyes catch something different. A figure approaching the brush.
Evan hurries for a photo, but the person doesn’t stop. They press on over the scratchy patches of weeds and into the dull throb of heat without hesitation, as if they’re on a mission.
His first thought is, I did not spend all my printing credits for some idiot to ignore my safety posters and burn to death.
His second is, Well, fuck.
Evan Harris isn’t one to go out of his way to help the individual. Social movements bring long-lasting change. He can’t save every dying potted plant cluttering up overcrowded classrooms or help every single classmate he sees shoved in a locker.
He looks at this person, thin, hunched over, and…carrying something in their hands.
Evan scrambles to loop his camera strap over his neck and starts running. The air is drier near the trees, pulsing with heat, and his hair is whipping about everywhere. He reaches out to grab the person – a kid his age, he realizes, who hasn’t even glanced back to see the madman going after him – and ends up stumbling.
Falling flat on his face.
Getting ash and grass in his mouth.
He groans and pulls his glasses off, clutching at his head.
And his efforts are rewarded with the voice of Nathan Prescott.
Evan stands as gracefully as he can, which isn’t saying much, considering his hair is a mess and his face doesn’t feel much better. Nathan is staggering upward, and…that’s a camera cradled against his chest. He chose to protect it rather than break his fall, which both impresses Evan and makes him feel like a complete tool.
He gestures limply at it. “…I thought you were—”
“The forest is already on fire, dumbass! What, did you think I was holding a fucking spray can to shoot fire or some shit?”
“A self-immolation wasn’t in my schedule today,” Evan says, and it’s not a total lie even if it’s not the whole truth. Nathan gives him a weird look, so he adds, “That means—”
“I know what that fucking means, we take world history together.”
Evan doesn’t flinch at Nathan’s glare, but he does blink, his expression going flat. “…Sorry.”
“…Okay. Fuck.” Nothing about Nathan’s tense shoulders and bitter expression implies that he thinks it’s okay. Still, it’s better than having him yelling. Nathan looks him up and down, unimpressed, but his stare falters at Evan’s chest.
Evan reaches for his buttons, assuming that his shirt has flown open at some point and that is not the message he wants to send to Nathan Prescott in any capacity, especially right now, but he encounters the worst possible outcome instead: his camera, having swung over his shoulder and against his chest, with the LCD shattered, the 44mm lens missing, a part of the handgrip missing, exposing wire and the memory card.
“…You tackled me with a camera around your neck?”
“Maybe,” Evan mutters. He glances about the ground for the lens. The poor thing is in pieces a few feet away. He sighs and makes to grab them, but Nathan’s already halfway there. “Hey—”
“That model camera’s a piece of shit,” Nathan says easily, like Evan didn’t spend weeks researching it and somehow it’s his fault there’s the equivalent of a grand scattered on the floor and dangling limply from his neck. Evan takes the aperture control just as Nathan picks the focusing ring off the ground.
“Well unlike you, I can’t just drop four grand on a camera.”
Evan jolts his head up. Nathan’s not even looking at him. “…Huh?”
Nathan, having gotten everything within his reach, holds it out. “No, genius. You seriously think I’d bring shit that costs that much to school with all those idiots?”
They stand. Evan looks at the dirt on his broken camera pieces and grimaces. “I don’t know, that’s why I asked.” He doesn’t mention that he’s pretty sure Nathan’s richer than Victoria, who wore a Louis Vuitton blouse today like it’s a thing regular people do, so he’s got a feeling that that’s something Nathan would do if there weren’t people like Drew North messing with him whenever he’s not with his friends.
“Whatever. Here,” and he hands over a handkerchief. Evan blinks down at it – embroidered with Nathan’s last name, of course, and lined with stains where Nathan has just wiped his own hands – and gingerly takes it to clean off his camera parts. Nathan makes for the hiking trail, and Evan falters, spinning sluggishly as to not damage his camera further.
“Do you want a ride back to campus or do you wanna burn to death?”
Nathan stares at him as if he’s being purposefully thick. “Look, if you’re saying this shit—” he points up, where Evan imagines flames are starting to billow up, “—is a big deal, it’d be really fucked up for me to make you, like, walk all he way back or whatever.”
“I actually biked here,” Evan says, but at Nathan unimpressed look he adds, “Uh, just…let me get my stuff?”
It occurs to him that Nathan Prescott perhaps thinks that Evan’s goal was to save his life. Which is not entirely false, but it seems unwise to point out that he thinks Nathan was planning on setting off a fire bomb or something.
…Truthfully, he’s not even sure if a firebomb the size of a camera exists.
Perhaps Nathan feels bad for him because his camera is busted. Luckily Evan’s family isn’t in want of money – his parents made him get this camera insured, but he’s not sure if tackling a guy in the woods falls under the policy – but it’s the thought that counts. And the ride. Nathan’s Buick isn’t the most ostentatious car Evan has seen on campus, but Nathan seems to keep it clean like everything else he owned.
“Why are you wearing that huge-ass sweater?” Nathan’s got his nose scrunched up. “It’s the middle of May.”
“I get cold,” Evan says, which is a better answer than for the aesthetic. He carefully arranges his hair under his hat and puts it on, then folds his sweater against his chest to carry.
Evan laughs, despite himself. “Did you seriously call me a dweeb? In this, the year 2010?”
“Oh, my bad. Nice hat, loser.”
“It is a nice hat,” Evan says. Nathan tosses him an annoyed glare, and he grins.
Nathan predictably complains on the way up the hill to his bike. Evan holds the waist-high barbed wire down with his sneaker for him to pass, but Nathan crosses his arms and looks at him expectantly. Evan steps over, places his sweater and camera in his backpack, then grabs his bike and carries it down until they’re back on the trail.
“What are you doing chasing wildfires anyhow?” Nathan asks. His oxfords keep kicking up dry dirt.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed the posters I’ve been putting up.”
“Yeah, I have, but you vegan-ass hippies always got some shit to complain about.”
“…Okay, first of all, I’m a non-ovo-lacto pescetarian—”
